The present invention relates to substitute checks, and is particularly directed to a method of creating a substitute check for use in a check truncation environment and an apparatus therefor.
In a check truncation environment, an original check is not transferred between banks during the check clearing process. Instead, electronic image data which is representative of an image of the original check is transferred between the banks. When a paper version of the original check is needed, it may be created on demand using the electronic image and related data which is representative of the original check. The paper version of the original check is called a substitute check, and is sometimes referred to as an image replacement document (IRD).
An image of the front side of the original check and an image of the back side of the original check must be printed when a substitute check is created. A magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) line of the original check must also be printed. The MICR line of the substitute check needs to contain all information from the MICR line of the original check, and needs to be printed with magnetic ink. The substitute check needs to be suitable for automated processing in the same manner as the original check.
In certain known check processing applications, the MICR line of the substitute check is unable to be exactly re-created from the MICR line of the original check. The MICR line of the substitute check is unable to be exactly re-created because spaces between different MICR fields in the MICR line of the original check are not included in a print data file which is used by a substitute check printer to print the MICR line of the substitute check when the substitute check is created. Spaces between the different MICR fields in the MICR line of the original check are not included in the print data file because a MICR reader in each of these known check processing applications is unable to “see” spaces between the different MICR fields in the MICR line of the original check when the MICR reader reads the MICR line of the original check. Accordingly, any subsequent attempt to re-create the MICR line of the original check based upon this print file data would not include spaces between the different MICR fields. It would be desirable to ensure that the MICR line (including any spaces between the different MICR fields in the MICR line) of the original check be faithfully re-created for a substitute check when the substitute check is created.